for a white wife, and they agreed to furnish her.  Some priests were sent to the Island of St. Thomas to hunt the wife.  This island had, even at that early day, a considerable white population.  A strong appeal was made to the sisters there to consider this matter as a duty to the holy Church.  It was set forth as a missionary enterprise.  After some contemplation, one of the sisters agreed to accept the hand of the Negro king.  It was a noble act, and one for which she should have been canonized, but we believe never was.

The Portuguese continued to come.  Gaton grew.  The missionary worked with a will.  Attention was given to agriculture and commerce.  But the climate was wretched.  Sickness and death swept the Portuguese as the fiery breath of tropical lightning.  They lost their influence over the people.  They established the slave-trade, but the Church and slave-pen would not agree.  The inhuman treatment they bestowed upon the people gave rise to the gravest suspicions as to the sincerity of the missionaries.  History gives us the sum total of a religious effort that was not of God.  There isn’t a trace of Roman Catholicism in that country, and the last state of that people is worse than the former.

The slave-trade turned the heads of the natives.  Their cruel and hardened hearts assented to the crime of man-stealing.  They turned aside from agricultural pursuits.  They left their fish-nets on the seashore, their cattle uncared for, their villages neglected, and went forth to battle against their weaker neighbors.  They sold their prisoners of war to slave-dealers on the coast, who gave them rum and tobacco as an exceeding great reward.  When war failed to give from its bloody and remorseless jaws the victims for whom a ready market awaited, they turned to duplicity, treachery, and cruelty.  “And men’s worst enemies were those of their own household.”  The person suspicioned of witchcraft was speedily found guilty, and adjudged to slavery.  The guilty and the innocent often shared the same fate.  The thief, the adulterer, and the aged were seized by the rapacity that pervaded the people, and were hurled into the hell of slavery.

Now, as a result of this condition of affairs, the population was depleted, the people grew indolent and vicious, and finally the empire was rent with political feuds.  Two provinces was the result.  One still bore the name of Benin, the other was called Waree.  The capital of the former contains about 38,000 inhabitants, and the chief town and island of Waree only contain about 16,000 of a population.

Finally England was moved to a suppression of the slave-trade at this point.  The ocean is very calm along this coast, which enabled her fleets to run down slave-vessels and make prizes of them.  This had a salutary influence upon the natives.  Peace and quietness came as angels.  A spirit of thrift possessed the people.  They turned to the cultivation of the fields and to commercial pursuits.  On the river Bonny, and along other streams, large and flourishing palm-oil marts sprang up; and a score or more of vessels are needed to export the single article of palm-oil.  The morals of the people are not what they ought to be; but they have, on the whole, made wonderful improvement during the last fifty years.